/sci/ - Science & Math

> inb4: >>>/lit/

Analytic philosophy is alright, whatever offspring of continental philosophy belongs in /lit/.

>>7238211
>Why the hate for Philosophy /sci/?
because it would the 20 yo /sci/tards to actually step back from what they are doing and thinking for more than 5 minutes in their lifes. It would lead to a dead-end since to think requires tie and efforts.

So why bother and why not stay on the cliché
>philosophy is anti-science and anti-math

THe board has far too many young undergrads to produce a talk relevant in /sci/, let alone in /phil/, let alone in the combination of the two.

Let the moderator cum in deleting what he can.

>>7238216
>> inb4: >>>/lit/
/lit/ - Literature

/lit/ argues constantly (especially the moderator) that philosophy is not welcomed on /lit/

I always wonder what's the matter about philosophy.
From the idea it's seems like a very interessting and necessary matter.
But I have a feeling that there no progress at all. All they do is to create wrong statement an contradict themselves all the time.
There's no great sucess like Newton' laws in physics or calculus in math. Philosophy never create any profit for mankind, since it exists.

>>7238228
So why is there no board for philosophy or other
humanities?

I don't hate philopshy at all. Just don't expect to get a job in society. People that study philosophy do it because they have the money, time and interest, if you don't have one of these three things. So studying philosophy at university is a dead end, because don't expect to get a job in this field. They only real way to make some money in this field is to become a famous philosopher, like Alan Watts or something. But then you'd really have to stand out and have unique idea's. Then the next step would be becoming popular, giving lectures, writing books, etc, you'd pretty much need to get a fan base. The chance to achieve all of this is superbly low, and most real philosophers didn't even study philosophy in school or something, but developed their mind and thinking throughout the years, put them on paper and published their books next to their actual job. If you'd become very popular with your books, which is a really hard thing to do, then maybe you could actually live of your work. And that isn't going to happen anywhere in your twenties. So legitimate studying it is pretty much a dead end for those who are not rich.

>>7238211
We hate you because you try to answer the fundamental question of why when in reality there is no answer however there is one thing in answering this question the truth and the truth is there is no answer and while everybody is fighting for survival you in your state of thrival are in a privileged position to use that knowledge how you wish philosophers are the only ones who revel in the question the rich and powerful on the other hand use this answer to manipulate and exploit the masses....

Philosophy is shit because every worthwhile topic in philosophy has branched into science.

good hobby, shitty career

>>7238307
Dude, I can't understand anything you said. Use punctuation.

>>7238211
Well, people who are into science and math are generally not aware of the relationship between philosophy and sciences. Many people tend to think that all philosophy is metaphysics and what I call "stoner philosophy", like Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, etc. That kind of philosophy is completely useless and really has nothing to do with sciences, and it's what people usually think when they talk about philosophy.

Hating philosophers as human beings is different from hating philosophy.
There can be various reason to despise "professional philosophers", especially when they think a degree in philosophy makes them somehow more enlightened than common peasants.

I don't have much sympathy for philosophers, they are kind of neutral to me, but I like philosophy and I recognize its importance, which is far higher than science.

>>7238211
I was thinking about the relationship between science and philosophy the other day, and it dawned on me. Most of the people that are using science in place of philosophy do this because they'd rather know the "how?" than the "why?".
>>7238307
Yet these same people are still trying to find the "truth". How do we find the truth? By asking how questions. but how do we know there is only one objective truth? It seems like at some point we need to ask why otherwise there wouldn't be any motivation to find the answer. There would be no reason, and if there is a reason nobody knows it (because nobody asked why). So how did a quest for reason even come about? As humans we are not perfect, we have irrational thoughts. but perfection is a human definition, so why are humans trying to become this thing that theit flawed minds created? It goes back and forth between the how's and the why's, I'm starting to doubt that any Truth exists. Yet the speed of light is aalways constant and is a scientific Truth.
It seems like science is trying to deny philosphy any credit in discovering truth, while building on Plato's foundation that there can only be one truth.

>>7238273
If you had read Plato then you'd know that philosophy is an essential everyday activity for living a virtuous life. Philosophy is not a job but a past time. Of you make money from publishing papers you are lucky, but no more part of the philosophic community than an enthusiast. Like a rugby player is rugby player whether he plays professionally or for a local club - still part of the union.

Also, in the UK, philosophy has amongst the top job prospects out of any undergraduate degree.

>>7238390
Why is living a virtuous life any better than a nonvirtous life? Why is reading Plato essential for living virtouosly, and if it is why do I need to pay some random Jewish editor for Plato's writings?

>>7238238
There is a classical art threat on pol just about every week

>>7238309
I think I have my answer here, /Sci/ is far too preoccupied with fields that generate a source of income, rather than knowledge for the sake of knowledge and exploring the reasons they want money, influence or power in the first place.

>Do Philosophy
And thats it. You have done it. You just read and write a lot of it, and nothing was lost.
Its just a phase, and that is what makes it worth it.

>>7238309
>What are politics and morality?

>>7238211
The "problems" of philosophy aren't interesting. There aren't really any nontrivial or deep arguments in philosophy.

Philosophy gave way to science. It's not that philosophy by it self isn't important, it's just not the way people think it helps. Ethics and morals are important thing in our society and that's where philosophy comes. Its important when it comes to rationalizing our thoughts and understand our place in the universe and in things we do. These dumb over-generalizations you make are just trolls and/or people who only care about "results".

I always thought of philosophy as the process of coming up with a hypothesis, whereas science was the process of putting it to the test.

>>7240446
This, so much this

>>7238221
Analytic philosophy is an anti-scientific autism circlejerk of manchildren so immature that they mistake their own emotional beliefs for logical propositions.

>>7238500
Tell me please which ethical problems have ever been solved by philosophy.

philosophy is not about solving pbs, it is more about asking good questions by help of good concepts

I just want to leave this man's strange work here.
http://paullaffoley.net/writings-2/dimensionality-the-manifestation-of-fate/

>>7238211
Philosophy is only stupid when people start faking eloquence and try to sound smart or edgy.

I bet you know guys who say "I'm going to be the devil's advocate and suggest (insert really absurd example here". Apparently being a devil's advocate gives you a free card to be an edge lord.

I dislike pseudo intellectuals but I have learned to live with them. I bet that even though /sci/ is not as eloquent as these edge lord, people here could hold up a good discussion or argument on science and philosophy.

Philosophy of science is pretty important, Karl Popper is mai waifu. I like what he wrote about the difference between historicism (trying to guess the future from the past in great general terms) and science (guessing little parts of the future from many little parts of the past). One of these actually works, one of them doesn't, but humans tend to incorrectly believe in both.

I think some of the people here base their beliefs about philosophy from a bunch of social stereotypes and a quick trawl of wikipedia rather than from reading a little into the subject. I'd suggest picking up 'The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy' so you at least have the broad understanding of what you are criticizing.

>>7238236
Philosophy created science you dumb nut. Also Plato is the basis of western and Christian thought.

It isn't science though. It has no place on this board unless you are applying it to science. As long as that's the case, I have no problem with it.

>>7240515
How is this dissimilar to pol's dindu meme?

Honestly at least theirs is sort of funny.

>>7240566
>It isn't science though. It has no place on this board unless you are applying it to science. As long as that's the case, I have no problem with it.
the mods have

>>7240596
What if that poster was a mod/janitor?

The problem with philosophy is that philosophers think they're talking about actual things when in fact they only have access to their ideas about things.

This makes philosophy's ramblings about the world and things in it absolutely useless in most cases, as you can only glean from them things about the author themselves.

>>7238211

Postmodernism, relativism, and "muh feels" killed off philosophy and the liberal arts in general.

>>7240607
>as you can only glean from them things about the author themselves.
As a brief example lets take plato's theory on forms.

If we take it to be about actual things in the world it's dead wrong. If on the other hand we take it to be about plato himself; we can reason that plato being a human probably had some kind of object recognition subroutine that assigns labels to things, table chair person and so on, despite their individual apparent differences they could still be categorized with similar things.

This only tells us a little about how his mind worked though.

>>7240607

>The problem with Forms is that plato think he's talking about actual things when in fact he only has access to his ideas about things.

>This makes plato's ramblings about the world and things in it absolutely useless in most cases, as you can only glean from them things about the author himself.

It's like saying science is bullshit because psychology is fluffy. Not even correct to begin with, and anyway not talking about the whole subject.

>>7240617
Actually I think that to my criticism science's anthropomorphization would reply that science only models the world based on observation we don't really know if there's a thing which is a photon or atom or whatever; they're just models and so on.

>>7240507
See: John Locke's idea of "natural rights."

>>7240622

What about mathematics, though? That exists only in our heads, but it seems to be pretty useful.

Plato's whole thing was about extending his ideas about mathematics to everything else. In his time, relativism was in: the Sophists of Athens thought as you do, that philosophy was just words that didn't really have any fundamental connection to reality. He saw that this didn't seem to hold up for Mathematics (that a statement like 1 + 1 = 2 seemed to be true in some sense: not at all up for debate) and sought to extend that idea of truths to other things in the world, so that other things could be obviously true in the way mathematics could be true.

His ideas about Forms don't really make any sense to me, but the key motivator for all of that, logic and mathematics, is pretty convincing even though they're just ideas and not things. Particularly once you get away from natural numbers and start talking about real or imaginary numbers: numbers aren't things, but they work.

Anyway, what about Aristotle? He was a biologist, and his ideas about the world were very different to his teacher's. My point with the 'fluffy psychology' analogy was to suggest that you are taking a fair criticism of one particular branch of philosophy, and then extending that to cover the whole field, which isn't valid.

>>7240645
but 1 + 1 = 10 (binary)
Or is it 11?
2*3 = 222?

>>7240653

You're making Plato's point for him: numbers aren't the same as representations of numbers.

>>7240607
who cares about utility ?

do you know that most maths is useless, or at least that it is not done in any purpose in sight ?

>>7238211
because philosophy doesnt matter.

math does.

>>7240645
>My point with the 'fluffy psychology' analogy was to suggest that you are taking a fair criticism of one particular branch of philosophy, and then extending that to cover the whole field, which isn't valid.

But that isn't what I was saying at all. I gave an example of one instance.

Psychology was a shit analogy because I wasn't criticizing one part of philosophy then saying look my one example proves it applies to the whole field; I was generalising to the whole field and then showing an example that most people would know a bit about the background of, because I don't have time to show how it applies to every fucking bit of philosophy ever.

>>7240613
this pretty much sums it up

>>7240678

Maybe you're incorrectly generalizing the whole field, then. I mean, the 'things / ideas about things' criticism can be applied to anything humans do. You need to target your criticism more precisely at 'philosophy' (which is a large, many-tendrilled field) rather than all of human thought.

>>7240686
Maybe my generalisation was wrong, but since you didn't even understand the scope of my original statement I won't be taking your word on it.

>>7240692

You said

> The problem with philosophy is that philosophers think they're talking about actual things when in fact they only have access to their ideas about things.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I took that to be targeted at Plato's ideas rather than all of human knowledge, as it kind of works for the former case, but it's not suitable for the later case (because if it's a general statement, you have to throw out all of human thinking). When you clarified to say that it wasn't targeted at just Plato's philosophy, I concluded that it's far too wide a generalization.

One particular criticism that I got at earlier: You really need to solve the 'is math real?' question in a way that allows science and engineering (assuming you want to keep those as valid fields) while also maintaining the 'ideas aren't things' statement you made, and I think you will have trouble doing that.

>>7240696
Yeah look it was a pretty broad statement, forgive me for giving an example so that people could understand what I was trying to say and not diving into a proof that would be literally volumes on fucking 4chan.

>>7240699

If you like, you can say

> I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Because it really isn't much of a margin.

>>7240705
> I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Best line ever.

>>7238221
Analytic = autism, continental = gobbledygook
Classics are the best.

>>7238527
They're not even really problems. I mean the most celebrated philosopher of the 20th century hated the entire field and said it was useless.

>>7238211
I learned all I had to know about philosophy from Feynman. Then I did a Physics and Philosophy MSc which basically reaffirmed what I'd read in Feynman.

Later Wittgenstein and Parfit were okay though.

>>7240613
This is very true.

>>7238495
Probably b8... but philosophy doesn't create or discover knowledge. It's just uninformed opinions.

>>7241195
Feynman was not a philosopher and if you use his silly autistic ideas in the place of a meaning for your life you will be lost forever.

>>7241208
The opinion that philosophy is just uninformed opinions is the only uninformed opinion here, anon.

>>7241192
Yeah well it really isn't very strange that the most skilled in (Insert Random Skill) get frustrated that everyone else sucks so bad. People tend to compare others with themselves.

>>7241240
So how do we help them dampening that frustration?

Philosophers think they are deep for holding opinions.

>>7241195
>I learned all I had to know about philosophy from Feynman.
>Masters in philosophy
gtfo trolltron

you know nufin jan snaw

>>7241195
>Later Wittgenstein
My man.

>>7238221
You sure are a master of meme dichotomies.

>thinking about thoughts themselves (philosophy)

Why would that require philosophy? Why shouldn't I think on my own?

>>7238356
>Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre
>stoner philosophy

Nigga wat. Step up your dissing game, that's not how you piss on those guys without losing credibility. Have you even read a book by each ?

>>7238356
>the relationship between philosophy and sciences

Philosophers hating science and scientists ignoring philosophers?

>>7238236
Contradicting yourself and your contemporaries in order to reach a conclusion that withstands severe scrutiny is a basic part of Philosophical thinking. You're not trying to stalemate yourself, you're trying to reach an acceptable answer by first processing and ultimately discarding all unacceptable answers. It is a running self-criticism, what Plato called "the dialogue in the soul." And it certainly can contribute to the success of mankind for it deals with concepts such as objective morality, personal ethics, acquisition of knowledge, etc.

Perhaps you should actually study philosophy before attaching such negative connotations to it.

>>7241192
You mean Wittgenstein ? He didn't even really said that (I mean a guy who does philsophy his whole life but argues that it's useless and that he hates it ? Does that sound credible ? Keep in mind he wasn't in for dem monies). Actually young Wittgenstein was an arrogant sperglord, and that's what a lot of people like to remember about him, like Einstein showing his tongue to a journalist once.

>>7241195
>I learned all I had to know about philosophy from Feynman.

Feynman was just a troll and a proud one at that. Good physicist, but he didn't even try to be a philosopher. You might as well try learning choreographed swimming by following a professional bicycle rider (it would actually work better).

>>7241208
The first scientists were also philosophers and were informed by their experiment as well as by earlier philosophical traditions.

>>7241315
You mean like everyone here ?

>>7241546
Perhaps YOU should study philosophy because everything you said are fedora'd misconceptions. This is NOT how philosophy works. Philosophers are extremely biased, dogmatic and stubborn. No philosopher ever changed his views. They are not open to arguments. They only repeat their subjective beliefs over and over again, assuming implicitly that they are axiomatic truth, and then proceed to create worse and worse fallacies whenever they are facing criticism. It's patheticly immature. Just like you.

>>7241547
>The first scientists were also philosophers and were informed by their experiment as well as by earlier philosophical traditions.

And then science turned out to be the better method, and philosophy died.

>>7238396
If you knew anything about philosophy these questions would seem self-evident.

>>7240645
But Mathematics can be used to accurately explain the natural world, much like philosophy, whether it is simply "in your head" or not.

>>7241551
Literally the worst and most butthurt bait I have ever seen on this website.

>>7241579
You got BTFO so hard that you have literally no rebuttal other than shouting "butthurt" and "bait". Admit it.

>>7241582
Okay, I was trying to avoid talking to you because you're so needlessly over-aggressive but lets do it, shall we?

Explain how reaching conclusions through self-questioning is a "Fedora'd Misconception," please.

>>7241551
>you stupid
>no u

Nice.

> This is NOT how philosophy works.

Capitilising your words won't make your statement magically more true. For instance:

> No philosopher ever changed his views.

Who are Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein ? Fuck, Descartes actually starting travelling and enlisting in armies because he wanted to open himself to experience and challenge his own preconcpetions. Was every philosopher ever born into this world with an already formed set of opinions ? If not, how did they form their opinions over the 40 years that for most precedes the publishing of their first major work ?

> They are not open to arguments.

And are you open to arguments currently ? Note that you're merely writing (in caps, for some reason) your opinions without backing them up with so little as a namedrop.


> It's patheticly immature. Just like you.

You seem way too upset for a discussion of such a small caliber. Calm down, you're not going to prove anything to anyone, not even your own stupidity.


>>7241558
Philosophy is not an unified method (and science isn't an unchanging method for that matter). Also, better for what ? Does science tell you how to best behave in front of that girl you like but haven't the courage to speak to (don't lie, I know) ? I mean actual science, not those "statistical social science" articles about most attractives jawlines you read through the NYT.

The fun thing is that philosophy is still doing to a large extent what it has done, however, that things happens to be less relevant to our society now. It's not exactly a good thing, though sure philosophy was always used to a variety of ends, not all of them laudable.

>>7241558
>And then science turned out to be the better method, and philosophy died.
Well said.

>>7241589
>Explain how reaching conclusions through self-questioning is a "Fedora'd Misconception," please.

If that's what you got from my post, then no explanation of mine will be able to overcome your imbecilic lack of reading comprehension.

>>7241599
You guys are some seriously arrogant pricks. Perhaps that's all I got from your post because the other 90% was useless drivel and vulgarities.


Thanks for the riveting discussion, Mr. Intellectual.

>>7241551
Hah. Projection: the post

Depends, shit like metaphysics is trash but some things have actual value like ethics.

>>7241902
>ethics
>not just the epitome of feels-ing
>not trash
>valuable

"If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong" -Richard Feynman

>>7242610
physicists trying to justify their incomes

reminder that no scientist is able to justify the scientific method

if science is so better than any other activity, why can it not prove that the scientific method is necessary ?

>>7242692
>reminder that no scientist is able to justify the scientific method
It works. Am I a pro philosopher yet?

>>7242699
>It works
what works ?
why do you say that the ability to predict something more or less accurately is to be right ?

are you able to prove that our models speak indeed about the world, why and why this knowledge is somehow authentic ?

>>7242713
>what works ?
The scientific method.

>why do you say that the ability to predict something more or less accurately is to be right ?
I don't. I say the ability to predict something more or less accurately is useful. If science was not useful no one would use it.

>are you able to prove that our models speak indeed about the world, why and why this knowledge is somehow authentic ?
Who cares? Only autistic philosophers. Science is a practical best guess, empirical facts, not "truth" or "authentic knowledge". There is no point in searching for something that can't be found and used. If you want idealizations, do math. Now fuck off philososhit.

>>7242729
>useful
I understand that you are butthurt, but let me laugh more at you in telling me to what it is useful.

reminder that your claim is that science is useful be cause it works because you define works as being useful

nice tautology

>>7242739
>I understand that you are butthurt, but let me laugh more at you in telling me to what it is useful.
I thought philosophy majors were supposed to at least be literate. Are you still in high school?

>reminder that your claim is that science is useful be cause it works because you define works as being useful
Wrong again retard. Reading it, isn't that hard. My claim is that science works and it's useful.

>>7238211
I can't believe no has pointed this out, but your girlfriend basically holds the opinion of David Hume.

There is nothing inherent in seeing two stimuli, for example a fire and the lighting of a candle, that tells you there is a connection. And you know nothing for sure about the world that would mean that seeing these two stimuli together often increases the chance of them being connected.

It's also known as "the problem of induction".

Hume's solution is simply to admit that the human mind isn't logically perfect. We just can't help assuming there is causation even though there is no logical reason to think it is the case.

Some ways this has been argued against:

1) Kant would say that causation is "a priori", given beforehand. Just to state the problem of induction you need to assume some kind of causation.

2) Karl Popper's "anti-epistemology" of falsifiability. You just make up stuff like crazy and then throw it away if it isn't disproven. So there's no need to induce anything because you're just bullshitting. Fortunately you should be able to disprove enough stuff to be able to function. Wait, your theory can't be disproven? Throw it in the trash.

>>7242739
All of philosophy is tautologies.

Nobody in science cares about >>7242713
The last two questions here. Most people, including a lot of professional philsophers I know, simply think those questions aren't answerable, and so we use the scientific method, which is very easily justified logically --if two theories are different fundamentally but yield the same results (as in, imagine that theoretically all possible observable predictions by these two theories are the same). Then it is literally meaningless for a human being to ask whether one theory is correct or the other. So, if we have a theory, and we imagine all possible predictions it makes and all of those predictions are correct, then our theory is "correct." Think of equivalence classes of theories which make the same predictions. Elements within an equivalence class are indistinguisheable to us, so we don't bother thinking about whether our theory is "really" right or wrong. We're just trying to find the one that best fits our given experimental data. But we don't have a way of knowing for certain that we've made all possible predictions, so we spend time thinking of other theories and other experiments to do to either refute current beliefs, or have better models for the universe. I think there are only a finite number of these equivalence classes, and so eventually, if we work hard enough ,we'll get as close to the truth as we can, though we'll never really know if or be able to prove it.

>>7242692
see >>7240515

>>7242769
Ah I think I may be starting to get it. We defined certain laws because we have witnessed and tested them so much so through habit and analysis we come to conclude that these laws are certain. So going off of that we can understand outcomes due to previous understanding not from the outcome itself without previous understanding.


Also when something doesn't follow established laws we come up with a new law to account for this with the ultimate goal of finding a set of laws that can predict everything.

>>7240705
You the giving one

Yeah

>>7241315
People think they're deep for being self aware enough to not be constantly stuffing their faces with food or fucking everything in sight (a desire ones body can not often live up to without resorting to great expenditure) in some environments. They avoid thinking about themselves, their actions and the consequences, at all costs unless it's necessary for their career. They do not try to comprehend their emotions, which cannot be handled with a "how?" question.

Information on chemical pathways will not help someone dissect complex and powerful emotions like jealousy, shame, rage, injustice, etc in their own life. Maybe someone could, but it's an ill fitting tool.

Asking "why?" will lead to more useful outcomes if you spend the time to understand how humans, and you yourself, think. Our brains and their instinctual logic make our thoughts far more similar than one might like to assume. It's much easier to interact with others when you never need to feel lost or confused by someone's actions, for they are hardly original. Place yourself in their circumstances, and understand their pain, and wow it's like magic! Instead of being confused by the actions of others, you understand your own emotions enough to be in a compassionate mindset.

I'd go so far as to say that this level of empathy is the natural progression of the "why?" question when applied to human thought. Unless you can show me a different outcome? I'm going to assume it will be more self serving than taking the time to understand others so that they might understand you.

>>7242699
1. Please show me a philosopher who objectively justifies it,.
2. Please show me a philosopher who justifies the philosophical method.
3. Please prove that anything requires justification.

>>7243975
PHILOSOPHY FAGS BTFO

I'd like to see you philofags get some money with your shitty degree, how does it feel to never make anywhere near as much as I'm going to? Bet it fucking sucks doesn't it?

>>7244164
>he still gets up in the morning for money in 2015

>>7244164
jokes on you I don't lust for material possessions anymore

>>7241236

>Feynman was not a philosopher

And all the arguments of the kind, pic related.

>>7238211

Therefore, if /sci/ does, /sci/ hates itself.

QED